Is Maryland Southern or Eastern?
Some reax to today's column, "Maryland politics, economy just aren't Southern anymore."
I enjoyed your column very much, but I would not be eager to see Maryland embrace too much of New England or its ways. I own with my brother a house in New Haven, CT which has been in our family since the 1920's. The real estate taxes are more than double what I pay for the same size property and age home here in Baltimore County. As you likely know each small New England town is totally independent with an amazing overlap of redundant services from town to town. Each town is its own totally separate entity with East Haven, North Haven, West Haven all maintaining separate fire, police, public works departments, and school systems. There is no chance of co-operation since each town has a seventeenth or eighteenth century founding. It gets worse as you move away from working class towns to more pedigreed "colonial" towns.
And:
Point of history: It was in 1969, for many of the reasons you cite in today's column, that Gov. Marvin Mandel, fed up with the antics of George Wallace and his fellow travelers in the Southern Governors' Conference, conceived and organized the Mid-Atlantic States Governors' Conference. The idea at the time was to create a conference for discussion of mutual concerns, such as transportation, education, the environment, the Chesapeake Bay, among the six states the make up the region. Out of the conference came many of the inter-state compacts and agreements by which we live today. What I don't know is whether the conference still exists or was abandoned or subsumed along the way.And:
it amazes me as taxed and regulated as we are that you still think the dems are right and the rep. are wrong. whenwill you all wake up?
And:
As it was before the Civil War, Baltimore continued to be the banking, commercial and industrial supplier to the Old South. However, this all changed during the 20th century with the rise of such commercial centers as Atlanta and Charlotte.
Comments
Mr. Hancock – Your argument about Maryland not being a Southern state (anymore) is not well reasoned and reveals a certain Baltocentrism (I think I just made that up) common in those that don’t venture out of the metropolitan areas. Politically, the state is not as in line with the northeast as it might appear. While the overall voting results are similar, the composition is radically different. Two factors unique to Maryland must be considered.
First, Maryland’s black population is much higher than other states in the Upper South. Maryland 30%; Virginia 19%; North Carolina 21%; Tennessee 17%. In fact, Maryland is much more similar in this regard to the states of the Deep South. Contrast this with states in the Northeast (e.g. Massachusetts 7%; Pennsylvania 11%; New York 17%). Most of that 30% probably reside in Baltimore and the D.C. suburbs.
Second, given its proximity to the Northeast and because it contains the suburbs of the federal government teat off which a great number of liberals feed, the number of Northeasterners who have emigrated to Maryland is larger than other Southern states (Virginia comes close).
Given that the black vote goes 90-95% Democratic, and that the other more liberal inhabitants reside in the Baltimore/D.C. area it is more accurate to say that the Baltimore/D.C. metropolis is a Northeastern city in a Southern state. The other areas, particularly Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore are much more Southern politically and culturally – reflective of the historical makeup of the state. Maryland is much as she was at the time of the War of Northern Aggression: a Southern state occupied by Yankees.
Harris Murphy
Posted by: Harris Murphy | June 10, 2009 10:27 PM